


here, yet far

by SilverSie



Series: Strange Magic Week 2016 [1]
Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Strange Magic Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7838257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSie/pseuds/SilverSie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I told ye before, Princess… Fae magic is as strong as our promises, and cannot be broken.”</p>
<p>A Sleeping Beauty / Maleficent AU for Strange Magic Week Day 1: Fairy Tale AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here, yet far

**Author's Note:**

> (song of choice - About Today by The National)

_She would be safer with me_ , he told himself. _Where I can help her_.

When the Crown Princess of the human kingdom succumbed to her ancient curse and fell into her death-like sleep, her father did the only thing he could and kept her secure in the castle, behind the most guards he could arrange, as if that would somehow keep the evil of the curse at bay (no matter what words he liked to use, that’s what it was, evil, and a curse). So she would stay until they discovered how to wake her again, what sort of magic this was that had its grip over her. Never mind that their relationship with the magic-folk was… a little more than _strained_.

But the King of the Forest would not stand for this. It was clear the human King had no inkling how to help his daughter ( _Great Earth,_ she’s the _Crown Princess_ and he was such a fool he had no idea--) and so it was up to _him_ to do it instead. _He was the only one who could_. (how could her father know, _you never said_ \--)

( _it is your fault after all--_ )

It was simple enough to steal into the human castle, so unprepared they are for magic, and he knew just where she would be (he didn’t know _how_ he knew-- _it was her scent_ he told himself, _I’ve just caught onto her scent_ \--)

Only when he gets there, when he actually slips into her room in a shadow cast by moonlight, when he actually _sees_ her…

The sleep truly looks like death. He knew this, had seen it before, and still he is surprised. There is no color in her face. He knew in her eyes he would see no honey and no sunlight. Her hair no longer resembled warm, rich earth, now dull and bare as it fell into her eyes.

It is this sight that bores a hole in his chest, gnawing and threatening to consume (the pain is knife-sharp and makes him wonder--)

“ **I did this** ,” The ache is too great and he kneels by her bedside, the amber of his staff casting a soft glow over her, a poor mimicry of the sunlight that lights up her features so beautifully, “ **Could ye _ever_ forgive-?** ”

_Yes, repentance,_ he decides with finality. That is why he must take her, this was his doing, _I didn’t know, I didn’t--_

He had always been afraid (yes, _terrified_ ) of her touch before ( _when she reached out to feel the skin of his jaw, eyes alight with wonder at how the thorns pricked the skin of her palm--_ ) but this time, _this time_ he is the one to reach out to her.

“ **I cannot remove the spell, Princess,** ” he speaks to her as if she could hear, ( _curse, evil, evil, **evil** \--_) **“I told ye before-- Fae magic is as strong as our promises and cannot be broken. But I _do_ promise ye this,** ” a knuckle grazes her cheek—she is still warm as daylight-- his voice is tender; “ **By the Earth,** **if I have to search the skies themselves…** ”

But a noise outside her door interrupts and makes his wings flare in caution, and in the next second every trace of him was gone along with the cursed Princess, the only thing left being the wanton moonlight laying over her sheets.

 

* * *

 

 The Forest King likes to think that she would like where he takes her, away from her Kingdom and further into the heart of his forest than she’d ever been (he’d never allowed her to go far past the border, such things were unwise). Even just the forest border, though, she loved (yes, _loved,_ “ _I’ll never see this place the same **ever again** —_“), while the true secrets and magic of the wood lie at the core, near his castle. _Yes, she would have liked it here_. _If I could have ever brought her here under different--_

Here in his castle of ancient wood and stone cut only by the weathering of wind and water, he sets aside a special place just for her: atop the highest steps, where the sun could reach her more easily, in a room formed by thriving branches and vines. Her bed is a nest of moss and thistledown, cradled in boughs with only the softest of leaves interspersed with purple laurel blossoms (The purple flowers were always her favorite, and she always liked how cool the moss was when she lay on it, and wondered at how the thorny thistle could have such feather-soft seeds in the summer. _She laughed when it tickled her nose, making him smile…_ )

Here he lays her down, cradling her head to prop it up on a bundle of the spun silk from silkworms. It is likely his imagining, but she seems to nestle into the moss and the silk and the thistledown as if she _belonged_. The light of the amber lamps hanging from the branches above settles about her like soft sunlight filtered through leaves, restoring a fraction of life to her appearance. It settles his mind and the gnawing in his chest, if only slightly.

“ **I promise ye, Princess** ,” he says again, finishing his oath so he would now be held to it, “ **I will find that which will end your death-sleep. Wherever they may be.** ” _They who would claim her heart, and have their heart claimed by her in return._ (you never told the King, you were petty and cruel and unfair and _evil_ and _you never told him and he could have helped_ \--)

“ **I didn’t _know_ ,**” the King said, bitterly, to no one. With a sigh and a sharp whistle, he calls to his side three pixies of bright color, to the untrained eye only specks of light dancing on a breeze. In them he places all of his hope and very nearly all of his trust. “ **Two summers past the Crown Princess of our neighbors was engaged to be wed,** ” he gestures a hand to their slumbering guest (she never told him about being engaged, or anything about her life really, he had to become privy to this information after her fall into the sleep, _after finding out who she was—_ some piece of him is bitter and he doesn’t know why--) “ **Learn everything. Find them. Bring them here.** ” Before the pixies can leave he raises a finger, “ **Appear to them only as songbirds.** ”

Instantly, in their place sat a bird of pink, of green, and of purple, the three of them perched on a branch making up the Princess’s bed. With a wave of his staff the branches of a wall open, twisting into an arch and rearranging the stone floor to extend out onto a balcony. With his leave, the pixie-birds take flight out into the forest, back to the west. He sighs again and with a tap of his staff to wood the balcony forms a low railing, mimicking the one he saw outside of her room when he went to retrieve her. It would give her more sun, at the least.

But from this he withdraws, for as much as he would prefer to stay by her side, his own chamber lay far down, at the roots and the earth, for the sky was much too large and vast for him to be so near.

 

* * *

 

Days pass until there is news. And even then, the _news_ is not something he anticipated, nor something he particularly wanted.

It begins with a bone-deep feeling that takes him back two cycles—the feeling that a human woman has entered the Forest. (there have been a few in the seasons since the honey-eyed brunette first stumbled across the border, and it would be a lie if he said he hadn’t been kinder to these others ever since meeting her. This kindness does not prevent him from chasing them out of his forest, however. She is and will ever be the only exception—so he thinks)

This human, though, he can tell is accompanied by a pixie—and to his dismay her presence is much too _familiar_ to be the one he was searching for. He knows this before he even opens the doors to the castle to reveal a small, young woman with gold-spun hair and doe eyes that held the sky in them. Fear is shown in every fiber of her being, but she stands her ground. He is already reminded of someone. A small, green bird is perched on her shoulder, and he scowls. The green one was always the mischievous one.

“ _You have my sister_ ,” her voice is surprisingly strong yet light as the wind, “ _And I would really like her back, please.”_


End file.
